Re: Secondary Shape Madness

["Robert Moodie" <robertm(at)hybride.com>]

This thread seems to have deviated from the original question, so if I'm off the mark here...

 

1 thing I really wanted to be able to do with the shape manager recently was the idea of layered shapes.

I thought it might be possible where you see the 'result' shape in the SM.

 

Imagine you do 1 pass of shape anim and that generates the result shape.

You then duplicate that, rename it and continue to your second pass of shape anim. The starting point of your second pass is the 'live' result shape from the first pass.

 

You then have 2 layers of shape anim in a non-linear setup. You can go back and tweak layer 1, knowing that this will be piped in as the animated base shape for your layer 2.

Or another example where this would be useful would be a shape plotted envelope that you wanted (needed ;-) to tweak further.

(although I admit this scenario has changed somewhat with Point Oven available)

 

Make sense?

 

_rob

 

robert moodie
td | Hybride
www.hybride.com

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Bradley Gabe" <withanar(at)stanwinston.com>

To: <XSI(at)Softimage.COM>

Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 5:36 AM

Subject: RE: Secondary Shape Madness

> It is indeed a rather large margin. You can see for yourself if you 
get
> a primitive null, set an exporer to All Nodes, then right click 
and
> expand all on the null. There are at least 50 parameters there, some 
of
> them int's, but most of them doubles. 
> 
> We tested our 
mesh cache system on models of 50,000 points and up, and
> we were able to 
get playback at 24 fps. I just tested keyframe
> transformation animation 
on 1000 nulls and the best playback I get is 8
> fps.
> 
> 
>> > You can always expect that you'll reach a point where the 
most
>> > efficient solution is to simply model what you need, and 
blend that
>> > into the performance result.
>> 
>> Yeah, it's called the beginning. ;-)
>> 
>> While 
it may be more memory efficient to translate a few points than use 
>> 
null deformers, I don't think it's by the margin you're assuming.  The 
>> advantage to using nulls is it gives you more options (even if 
ugly) - which 
>> you don't seem to have as you're currently locked 
into the shape system and 
>> it's quirks/limitations.  Honestly, 
what does the shape animation system 
>> give you that you cannot 
replicate using null deformers?
>> 
>> Matt
>> 
>> ---------------------------
>> Matt Lind
>> 
Animator / Technical Director
>> Softimage certified 
instructor:
>>     
Softimage|3D
>>     Softimage|XSI
>> 
Matt(at)Mantom.net
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Date: Sat, 
29 Jul 2006
>> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
>> From: withanar(at)stanwinston.com
>> 
Subject : RE: Secondary Shape Madness
>> 
>> I'm already using 
envelopes on a serious of nulls representing a volume.
>> And that's 
riding on top of another system, which is riding on top of
>> another. 
The thing is, it doesn't matter how many nodes you use in your
>> 
deformer. You can always expect that you'll reach a point where the 
most
>> efficient solution is to simply model what you need, and blend 
that into
>> the performance result.
>> 
>> Each null 
* envelope weight consumes significantly more memory than the
>> 3 
double values required to translate a point. It would be far more
>> 
efficient to write a simple scripted op transfering the
>> 
Points.PositionArray from one model to another. 
>> 
>> 
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